Are your Philips Hue lights randomly going to 100% brightness? You're not alone.

Smart lights have many distinct advantages over “dumb” lights, with the most obvious being integration into your wider smart home. However, one terrific advantage to smart lights is the ability to dim them even if they are in a fixture that doesn’t support dimming. After all, LED lights can be incredibly bright at full power, so many folks leave them dimmed all the time.

Unfortunately, I’ve been having an issue with Philips Hue bulbs in my home randomly skyrocketing from 40% brightness (where I like to leave them) to 100% brightness. I’ll just be sitting on the couch or reading in bed, and boom, my lights will become tiny little suns. The problem started happening only about a week ago, and nothing I do seems to solve it.

At first, I thought it was a “me” problem, but it turns out I’m not alone. There are multiple threads online (here’s a notable one) filled with Philips Hue users complaining of the same issue. The problem seems to span across different Hue products, and it doesn’t seem to matter what kind of fixture those products are installed in. This heavily suggests a software issue.

One commenter in the thread linked earlier suggests this has something to do with a recent software update to the Hue Hub. We can’t confirm that, but it would make a lot of sense. It would explain why the problem occurs across multiple lights, for one, and would also explain why the problem just started happening seemingly out of nowhere.

We have reached out to Philips Hue for a statement on this, but we didn’t immediately hear back. If we get a statement, we will update this article accordingly. In the meantime, if you’re frustrated with your lights suddenly getting brighter out of nowhere, it’s likely just a problem you’ll need to wait out until a software patch comes along.